109.5, but barely

The Week 3 weekend weighing put me at 109.5 kg (240.3 lbs.), but only barely: the weight fluctuated with water consumption, so I appear to be hovering around the 110 mark. This is not much weight loss from the previous week, and I get the feeling that weight loss, from here on in, is going to be a real struggle as my body dials down its metabolism in an effort to make up for the reduced calories. After three weeks on the Newcastle Diet, I'm done with shedding most water weight, and now it's really about fat loss. I could probably lose more fat if I went full-on keto, but that would mean making my own salads from now on instead of relying on Paris Baguette, whose salads contain bits of corn and dried cranberries (both of which are carby and prevent ketosis).

It was a bit frustrating to see so little weight loss after a 26K hike, but part of the problem may have been the kimchi-jjigae I'd eaten on Friday: the stew isn't calorie-filled until you add hot dogs to it, and I'd added some Korean "grill franks" to my jjigae. That may have taken me over my 800-calorie limit. I'm going to have to watch these limit-violations for the remaining seven weeks of this diet: it's not really the Newcastle Diet if I'm constantly above 800 calories.

The trade-off has been between weight loss and having enough energy to get through the day. That's been a struggle. I'm always craving food, and I can never quite eat to satiety. Since I'm also exercising almost every day now, that just adds to the problem. If MyFitnessPal's CICO-based approached were literally correct, I should be shedding pounds like crazy. Despite my several violations of the 800-calorie rule, I've been pretty strict with myself overall, which means, according to CICO, that I ought to weigh even less than 110 kg by this point. Well, we'll see what the next few weeks bring. Best to be patient, although this upcoming week isn't the best week to expect major weight-loss results: I'll be violating my protocol once again today, then I'll be doing the same this coming Friday when we have our luncheon.

But offsetting all this is the continual ratcheting-up of exercise. This coming week, I start walking up to the 10th floor of my building (for the past couple weeks, I'd been walking up to the 7th floor), and I'll be switching up the exercises I do as I build toward doing legitimate pullups and pushups. Stair work is tiring, but it's intense and doesn't last long. Hopefully, though, as with HIIT, the effects of the stair work last throughout a long part of the day. So even if, as we move forward, the weight loss isn't as dramatic as it had been during the first two weeks of the current diet, it'll still occur.

Fingers crossed.